UPDATE 5-Iraq launches Mosul offensive to drive out Islamic State

* Kurds says operation under way in villages east of Mosul
(Adds Iraqi military statement saying Islamic State defence
lines destroyed)

By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD, Oct 17 Iraqi government forces, with
air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition, launched an
offensive on Monday to drive Islamic State from the northern
city of Mosul, the militants' last major stronghold in the
country.

Helicopters released flares overhead and explosions could be
heard on the city's eastern front, where Kurdish fighters moved
forward to take outlying villages, a Reuters correspondent said.

The United States predicted Islamic State would suffer "a
lasting defeat" as Iraqi forces mounted their biggest operation
since the U.S. withdrew its own troops in 2011.

Some 30,000 Iraqi soliders, Kurdish Peshmerga militia and
Sunni tribal fighters were expected to take part in the
offensive to drive an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 Islamic State
militants from Mosul, a city of 1.5 million people.

"I announce today the start of the heroic operations to free
you from the terror and the oppression of Daesh," Prime Minister
Haider Abadi said in a speech on state TV, using an Arabic
acronym for Islamic State.

"We will meet soon on the ground of Mosul to celebrate
liberation and your salvation," he said, surrounded by the armed
forces' top commanders.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera television aired video of what it
said was a bombardment of Mosul that started after Abadi's
speech, showing rockets and bursts of tracer bullets across the
night sky and loud sounds of gunfire.

"This operation to regain control of Iraq's second-largest
city will likely continue for weeks, possibly longer," said the
commander of the coalition, U.S. Lieutenant General Stephen
Townsend, in a statement.

The Mosul offensive is one of the biggest military
operations in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled
Saddam Hussein.

"This is a decisive moment in the campaign to deliver ISIL a
lasting defeat," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a
statement, using an acronym for Islamic State.

"We are confident our Iraqi partners will prevail against
our common enemy and free Mosul and the rest of Iraq from ISIL's
hatred and brutality."

In 2014, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
proclaimed from Mosul's Grand Mosque a "caliphate" in Iraq and
neighbouring Syria.

If Mosul falls, Raqqa in Syria will be Islamic State's last
city stronghold.

KURDISH FIGHTERS

Islamic State has been retreating since the end of last year
in Iraq, where it is battling U.S-backed government and Kurdish
forces as well as Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi'ite militias.

The Iraqi Kurdish military command said 4,000 Peshmerga were
taking part in an operation to clear several villages held by
Islamic State to the east of Mosul, in an attack coordinated
with a push by Iraqi army units from the southern front.

In its first statement on the Mosul operations, the Iraqi
army media office said the advancing troops destroyed a number
of Islamic State defence lines.

Strikes carried out by the Iraqi and coalition jets hit an
unspecified number of the militants positions, it said.

A column of black smoke was rising from one of the
insurgents' positions on the eastern front, the Reuters
correspondent said, and seemed to be from burning oil being used
to block the path of the Kurds and obstruct the jets' view.

"We are the real Muslims, Daesh are not Muslims, no religion
does what they did," said a young Kurdish fighter in battle
dress as he scanned the plain east of Mosul from his position on
the heights of Mount Zertik.

As he spoke a Humvee drove by with the word Rojava, or
Syria's Kurdistan, painted on the protection plate of the
machine gun turret.

"This is all Kurdistan," Major Shiban Saleh, one of the
fighters onboard, said. "When we're done here, we will chase
them to Raqqa or wherever they go," he said.

He said about 450 Syrian Peshmerga fighters were involved in
the offensive east of Mosul, which aims to take back nine
villages during the day.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS FEARED

Early on Monday, Abadi sought to allay fears that the
operation would provoke sectarian bloodletting, saying that only
the Iraqi army and police would be allowed to enter the mainly
Sunni city. He asked Mosul's residents to cooperate with them.

Local Sunni politicians and regional Sunni-majority states
including Turkey and Saudi Arabia warned that letting Shi'ite
militias take part in assault could spark sectarian violence.

The Iraqi army had dropped tens of thousands of leaflets
over Mosul before dawn on Sunday, warning residents that the
offensive was imminent.

The leaflets carried several messages, one of them assuring
the population that advancing army units and air strikes "will
not target civilians" and another telling them to avoid known
locations of Islamic State militants.

Reflecting authorities' concerns over a mass exodus that
would complicate the offensive and worsen the humanitarian
situation, the leaflets told residents "to stay at home and not
to believe rumours spread by Daesh" that could cause panic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday he hoped the
United States and its allies would do their best to avoid
civilian casualties in an attack on Mosul.

The United Nations last week said it was bracing for the
world's biggest and most complex humanitarian effort in the
battle for the city, which could make up to 1 million people
homeless and see civilians used as human shields or even gassed.

There are already more than 3 million people displaced in
Iraq as a result of conflicts involving Islamic State. Medicine
is in short supply in Mosul, and food prices have risen sharply.
(With additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and
Michael Georgy in Erbil; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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